Thank you both so much.
So you both have, as others have mentioned,
the portraits that are in the exhibit at the CCP.
So could you tell us a little bit
what was it like to have your photograph taken for that.
Were you involved in deciding what
you were doing in the photograph,
or how did it all come about?
Sorry.
Y'all ever have in your leg just--
OK.
Pins and needles.
Yeah, I don't know.
I think he would talk to a poet and then get recommendations
from other poets about who he should photograph in whatever
city he was going to.
Closer.
OK, sorry.
And so he pretended that we were looking for a theater
to do an independent play.
And then we went to their backstage area
and it was like, OK, take your shirt off
and you're going to put makeup on in front of this mirror.
And I was really nervous that they
were going to bust in and be like, you can't be in here
shirtless.
But yeah, so it was his idea.
And then we collaborated in the conversation
while I was really nervous we were going to get in trouble.
And then it's a poem about going to a public sex theaters.
Thank you.
I don't think mine was as exciting as yours.
Yeah, he contacted me out of the blue.
I had no idea what this project was about.
And he wanted to base the photograph on "Six Months
After Contemplating Suicide," which
is the last poem of the book.
And his idea was to go to a cemetery and for me
to be playing with fireworks, which made total sense to me.
I was like, oh, yeah, that's exactly right.
And so I dressed up as if I were going to a funeral
but in the picture I'm holding a firework and I'm smiling.
The poem is about survival, and so I
feel like the photograph also shows that.
And it was a really fun experience.
I was in New Jersey.
I was living in New Jersey and the cemetery was actually
owned by his family.
I don't know how people own cemeteries but they do.
So that was that.
Thank you.
Do you want to say there's materials out on a table
and you can learn more about the Center for Creative
Photography, and all of the poetry, and all of the poets.
And you can see the specific photographs
that they're talking about, and also they're
in the Leaves of Grass book that's being sold,
the hardback book.
It's beautiful and it's a collection by B. A. Van Sise.
I want to use that as an epigraph.
I don't know how people own a cemetery, but they do.
Yeah.
I didn't know it was a thing.
Yeah, for sure.
So wild.
There's a question over there.
That was a really great reading.
Yeah, for sure.
I had a question for Erika, and maybe I'm
extrapolating too much, but is there any symbolism
for eggs in your poetry.
Because you seem to mention them a bit.
I guess I do.
Thank you for observing that.
I also apparently mention shit a lot--
I didn't realize-- and secretions and things
of that nature.
I think I'm really fascinated by things that come from the body,
whether it be human or not.
And so I think eggs are beautiful in a sense
because they nourish.
And I think they're also delicious.
So I think that's why they're in the book.
Thank you.
I appreciate that.
Great question.
This one's for sam.
How much did you think of Animal Farm
when you were considering the cover of the book?
Thank you for your question.
Also I feel like we're debating this whole presidency
or something.
I don't know, I found that on the internet on Pinterest--
plug for Pinterest-- and she's like this really weird
German artist who makes it.
Mostly, she's a sculptor.
But then I saw little human creatures with animal faces
and I was like, that's my poetry.
I didn't think of it for that, but for The Pig Book, which
is this next book I'm writing called The Pig Book,
there's an epigraph from Animal Farm,
and it's the last line of it.
"The pigs looked between the men and the pigs, and the pigs
to the men, and they couldn't tell the difference."
And that's the opening of the thing.
So I love that book.
Thank you for your question.
Thanks for your reading and a question
I have is around the ways in which sex
and sexuality just permeate throughout your collections.
And the poems that you read tonight,
curious about what other collections of poetry
your prose that engage the images,
themes around sexuality that just stayed with you,
or that haunt you as you write your own works of sexuality.
Sure.
Great question.
Thank you.
I feel that Sharon Olds was very instrumental in my development
as a writer.
I started reading her when I was 14.
And when I read her, I realized I
had permission to write about the body in all
of its beautiful and ugly glory.
And I think that just really opened up a world to me
that I didn't know.
And recently, Ada Limón, The Carrying,
I feel like that book is really beautiful in the way she
depicts desire and connection to the body.
But there are just so many amazing feminist writers
that are writing about wanting and seeking pleasure.
And I feel like for so long we were told
we weren't allowed to do that.
And things are really shifting on.
And I find it very exciting.
Thank you for that question.
I'm only interested in dirty books, so I love that.
I think the first text that gave me
any kind of interesting permission
to approach it in my writing was this Allen Ginsberg poem
called "Sphincter," which is like just about
his asshole and traces his lineage and history
of moving through the world through like what's
entered his asshole.
And I think for being like a little queer who
like wanted to die because of particularly the way
culture talks about anal pleasure and desire,
that was like a moment of like, oh I could write
a whole book about the anus.
And that's not just dirty as a politic, right?
So yeah, I think about that.
I'm thinking about the Uses of the Erotic
by Audre Lorde, which really helped
me think through centering the erotic as a place of power,
and ways of dismantling hegemonic structural harm.
Who else?
Oh yeah, there's basically a Mark Doty line in one
of the poems I read.
You all know that poem "Homo Will Not Inherit?"
It's just about a city at first, and then this one guy saying,
I'm going to punish your mouth.
And there's just something about that straightforward address
of action, and desire, and eroticism
that feels set beside, more lifted
language that feels really powerful to me.
I was writing things down my arm because I
have so many little delights.
But yeah, so many.
And also the lineage and history of like repressed queer
writers, like Hart Crane or early folks who
find ways to talk about the body and desire
but need to cloak it in their grandmother's
letters or something.
Anyway, yes.
Thank you.
One more question.
All right.
Poetry tends to be a very vulnerable sense, especially
when you're writing it, and both of you guys
have a lot of vulnerability in your poetry collections.
How did you become comfortable with putting that out
for the whole public to see?
Was there a process, or was there just a set of mind
that you overcame to be OK with it?
It's not always comfortable.
It shouldn't be comfortable.
I guess that's what vulnerability is, right,
where you are sharing a piece of yourself
that you're afraid to share.
And I think that the best writing, the writing that I
love, is writing that puts everything on the line
that like gives you everything, that
doesn't care about the ego, that is truthful even when
it's ugly.
That's what resonates with me and that's
what I want to do as well.
I think that's really important.
I feel like if you're not being vulnerable then
you're not really getting into what it means to be human.
Yeah, I think one of my first poetry teachers--
I didn't actually learn from her-- was this poet Tara
Hardy in Seattle.
And she would always say write into what terrifies you most,
and through that you'll find the most strange and liberatory
work in your own poem process.
And that's been really useful and truthful for me.
I think I'm only interested in work that scares me
at least when I first make it.
I think what ends up scaring me most,
though is when family looks at it.
There was a whole minute when my mom refused
to come to any of my readings because I
had this poem about like giving birth
to a snake in a bathroom stall.
And she was like, I'm good.
But I think that moment was really important.
It's a true experience, poetically true.
But it was important for me to say that work.
And then that vulnerability and openness with my mom
ended up really transforming our relationship.
She was like, I need some time away
and then now we can talk about your experience and your body
in this world.
Yeah, cool.